A complication you'll forget to look at
By Priya Nair, Singapore ยท
A sales associate once told me, with a perfectly straight face, that the steel perpetual calendar was not really a watch for new clients. I laughed. He didn't.
He had a point, in his way. At 90,000 to 95,000 dollars for steel, this is the sharp end of AP allocation, the reference they use to reward people who have already bought a lot of other things. What you get is a 41 mm case only 9.5 mm thick, which is remarkable for a perpetual calendar, and a blue Grande Tapisserie dial carrying day, date, month, moon phase and week number. Calibre 5134, automatic, open caseback.
The crowding is my complaint. Several subdials and a week track inside an octagon that's already busy with tapisserie looks wonderful in photographs and slightly fussy on the wrist. And the reserve is only 40 hours, which matters more here than on a time-only watch: leave it in a drawer from Friday to Monday and you're resetting a mechanism designed so you'd never have to. Get a winder. I mean it.
Water resistance is 20 m. Treat it like a gold bracelet.
Steel Royal Oak perpetuals have historically been serious collector pieces and I'd expect that to continue. But I'd be lying if I said I'd pick it over the Jumbo. One is a complication you admire, the other is a watch you wear.